Monday at Last with piano

In Monday at Last, violinist Cecilia Zilliacus and cellist Kati Raitinen create original programmes. They also welcome elite international and Swedish guests – this time, Michel Dalberto. The French pianist broke through internationally in the late 1970s. With Dalberto there’s a link to Maurice Ravel, included in this programme: Dalberto’s teacher was Vlado Perlemuter, who in turn was a pupil of Maurice Ravel and a leading interpreter of Ravel’s music in his era. 

The programme is fully French, with both familiar and less familiar music. First a rarely heard French composer – Rita Strohl (1865–1941). Like Debussy, she was inspired by the symbolic tides of the time. The sonata for cello and piano from 1898 is inspired by Racine’s tragic seventeenth-century play, and tells a story through music of Titus and Bérénice. 

The violin sonata in G minor from 1917 was Claude Debussy’s last completed work. He was dying and World War I was in full swing – making it particularly remarkable how colourful and heartfelt this music is, almost like an act of resistance.

The programme includes two works by Maurice Ravel. Michel Dalberto takes on the highly challenging piano suite Gaspard de la Nuit, music which – just as with Strohl – was inspired by a poem (by Aloysius Bertrand). The trio in A minor is equally sophisticated, and unites the three musicians after the programme’s solos. This music is incredibly varied, with beautifully poetic resting points. Ravel composed the trio in 1914, just before he enlisted: in August that year, Germany had declared war against France.